Bientôt l’été is a videogame for two players. Two players who pretend to be lovers. They pretend to be lovers separated from each other by lightyears of deep space. They have lonely walks along the shore of a simulated ocean, thinking wistful thoughts of each other. Thoughts from ancient Earth literature by Marguerite Duras.

Anbefalet af kuratorer

16. februar

As of now, you can pre-order our new game Sunset from the game's web page: http://tale-of-tales.com/Sunset. Pre-ordering gives you a Steam key on launch day, at a discount, and also a non-DRM version of the game for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Plus you are helping the creative team get through the last stretch of development. Thanks!

Anmeldelser

Fast company - "Bientôt l’Été resonates like an accomplished painting or a good piece of music."

The Verge - "Finally, a video game as artistic and hard to understand as French films."

Akimbo - "I was at times elated by the beauty of the sentiments expressed and, at other times, surprised by how dark it could feel."

Om dette spil

Bientôt l’été is a videogame for two players. Two players who pretend to be lovers. They pretend to be lovers separated from each other by lightyears of deep space. They have lonely walks along the shore of a simulated ocean, thinking wistful thoughts of each other. Thoughts from ancient Earth literature by Marguerite Duras.

The empty beach, the strong wind, the gentle music and a small colony of electric seagulls are their only companions. Yet their heart is full and their mind confused. Walk along the shore, until they meet the emptiness.

When it all becomes too much, they run towards each other. Enabled by intergalactic networks, they touch each other’s holographic bodies in cyberspace. A surreal game of chess becomes the apparatus through which they, man and woman, can talk. The words they have were given to them, as they have always been to lovers everywhere.

The sea remains, tugging at their hearts when not at their hairs and clothes, as it itself is tugged by the virtual moon. And as great as the desire for the other may be, they cannot stay away from the wind and the waves and the sand. Every time they find a new treasure. An abandoned tennis field. An heap of coal. A dead dog. Ordinary. Absurd. Meaningless. Yet comforting.

Enter a café, exit a villa, enter a casino, exit the ruin of an ancient colonial mansion. We know this is not real. So it doesn’t surprise us. Nothing surprises us. It doesn’t matter when you feel the pain of love. Of being in love, of falling in love, of leaving in love. There is no such thing as time. There is only love. And it never stops. No matter how much it hurts.

Before noting that I said I do not recommend this, please understand that it's not bad.With this confusing statement out of the way, let's get started. Bientôt l'été isn't a game. It's an artistic piece, and this needs to be understood. From what I could gather, the goal of it was to demonstrate how people can communicate, even if limited by language, actions, or possible phrases (as seen by the chess board in-game). However, this requires that someone somewhere is playing at the same time you are, unless you want to talk to an AI. It's a beautiful experience when it works well, but this is so rare I can't recommend a purchase at any time other than during a sale. Due to the game's artistic goal and nature, it was heavily slammed upon release, driving away potential players. Without a community waiting for another person to chat with, more people slammed the game for not having a community. This is Bientôt l'été's biggest problem, without players it simply cannot achieve the desired effect.For this reason I suggest buying this when it's on sale. More players are likely to be experimenting with it at the same time as you, and you're more likely to see the beauty of limited conversation with a complete stranger.

Before you, I never knew anguish. I tried to Imagine myself without you.

This game is about walking on the beach. And drinking wine. And smoking cigarrettes. And conversations that are incredibly fatalistic.

I liked the feeling I had after I played this game, but I cannot recommend it. I feel like it's more like a prototype for a mini-game. Kind of like a dream sequence or something, that keeps you from getting bored with the actual game, except there is no actual game. Just uselessness coupled with self-hate. C'est la vie.

This is, by far, the best cigarette smoking simulator on the market. At first, it seemed confusing with the long walks on the beach and random phrases popping up on screen, but only once I entered the café did I realize the actual draw of this title. As I sat at the chess board and waited five minutes for a partner to join, I then realized something else; I was the only person to buy this game. Thank god they included a computer controlled character to interact with or I may have missed the hidden gem in this pile of coal. We moved our chess pieces across the board and spoke sweet nothings to each other until only silence hung in the air. And then I saw it. Near the bottom of the screen was a classic lighter and a half full soft pack of smokes. Move over wine glass! The true beauty and meaning of game play was at hand. Once clicked, the screen goes black and you can actually hear your character click the flint, light up, and take a long, smooth drag. You can almost taste the tobacco. A puff of smoke fills the screen upon return to the scene. The cigarette is then seen majestically smoldering in the ashtray on the table. If clicked again, another drag is taken until there is nothing but a snuffed out filter left. Oh, but that's just the beginning. It seems there is no limit to the amount of cigarettes you can smoke! My only complaint would be that there aren't enough ways to put out your coffin nail. The choice to put it out on your lover's hand or leave it floating in their wine glass should be included in a future patch for the sole reason that some of the predestined lines are mad creepy. 8 out of 10 because I can't tell if they're menthol or not.

Game developers should be encouraged to challenge the status quo with narrative and mechanics, but I feel that there are certain best practices for game design that Tale of Tales often overlooks for no visible reason or benefit to the game. While Bientôt l'été has the most conventional controls and straightforward instructions of their games to date, it still suffers from the same problem: some strange design decisions have little to nothing to do with, and may even hinder the concept.

Imagine the PS3 game Journey: two players meet at random in a surreal world to make a connection. Except in Bientôt l'été, both players are chat robots stating phrases at random while smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, and playing chess (with a catch: you have to find the pieces first, but one at a time). The highlight of the game should be the multiplayer, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be very populated (a symptom of its avant garde concept, I guess), and the interactions are severely limited.

What should be a virtual date with a stranger in a surreal world becomes tedius, with no real interaction or connection with said stranger. Unlike Journey, which limits your characters' intractability to serve the purpose of the mechanics and design, Bientôt l'été's design stands at odds with its concept, preventing players from creating any kind of meaningful connections.

This hits a very niche market... and not very well. I typically really enjoy introspective forlorn romps through artsy settings, but this is a bit of a streatch even for me.

Spoilers follow:

No seriously, there's nothing to this game, so litterally anything I say past this point will "ruin" it for you.

Don't read further unless you've either already played it our have no intention to.

So the idea is that you go for long walks on the beach reflecting on this relationship you've had. Sometimes there's something on the beach that will drop a chess peice which you can take to the house and use on a chess board to hold something resembling a conversation with an online partner... The dialouge seems to suggest that these two love each other out of necessity and not for any actual romantic reasons... they don't seem to actually like each other but are bound to eachother anyway. It's really sad...These two need to see other people, but it's clear that there are no other fish in the sea, so to speak.Oh, and once you've collected all the chess peices, the next item to drop is a gun... well that escalated quickly. You can use the gun on the chess board like a peice. It does nothing in particular, but I think it's more meant to be a metaphore for putting an end to the relationship more than anything.

To sum up the game: Help I'm trapped in a holodeck of angst and regret! I don't know what love is and I want to kill myself because I'm so messed up about it!